The Joy of Six: Things we miss about the World Cup

France's Dominique Rocheteau takes on a Hungarian defender at the 1978 World Cup, while wearing the strip of local club Kimberley. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images


The Joy of Six: Things we miss about the World Cup

1) The Goddess of Victory

There's nothing particularly wrong with the Fifa World Cup™ Trophy. As five-kilo dods of solid 18-carat gold with two malachite layers go, it's as serviceable as they come. But just look at the name of it again. The Fifa World Cup™ Trophy. A functional and corporate monicker betraying a complete lack of invaluable – and dear God how they'd love to buy some of this – old-school glamour.


By comparison, the original trophy – French sculptor Abel Lafleur's The Goddess of Victory, a solid-silver-with-gold-plate statuette of Greek goddess Nike on a lapis lazuli stand – boasted 14 inches of hopelessly exotic old-time sass. It spent the entire second world war hidden from the fascists in a shoebox under an Italian FA administrator's bed. It was stolen in London in 1966, only to be found under a bush by a mangy dog possessing more brain cells than the entire Met. It looked great. And there it is, an inanimate Zelig, present and compliant at all of football's greatest moments, happy to be cradled in the brave hands of Obdulio Varela, Fritz Walter, Bobby Moore, Carlos Alberto, still gleaming.


But the Fifa World Cup™ Trophy especially can't compete with the mystical beauty of Coupe Jules Rimet – it was renamed after the competition's founder in 1946 – because, well, it's been tragically lost to us for ever, melted down by goons for coins. When the trophy went walkabout pre-Pickles in 1966, a spokesman for the Brazilian FA opined that such larceny "would never have happened in Brazil. Even Brazilian thieves love football and would never commit this sacrilege." Oh dear.


After Brazil received the cup permanently in 1970, only one thing was ever going to happen. It was put on permanent display in a bullet-proof glass-and-wooden case in the foyer of the Brazilian Football Federation's HQ in Rio de Janeiro, where it sat peacefully for 13 years. Until, on the evening of 19 December 1983, burglars entered the building and hacked through the wooden back of the cabinet with a crowbar. This time Pickles, having hung himself by his own lead in 1971 while chasing a cat, was not around to sniff it out. Coupe Jules Rimet was never found, commonly thought to have been melted down. For coins. By goons.


"It is not the fault of the thieves but of the authorities," suggested Pele, who'd gamboled about with the thing three times, practically attached to it. "The people are desperate, without money and without food." For a man often knocked for his relentless corporate shilling, it's a quote worth remembering; a generous – humane and leftist – response from someone who surely felt a solid-silver sliver die inside.

Read all SIX here